HorsesAss.Org

In her latest column — Getting to the root of the stem-cell debate — Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey raises a very interesting question: how much does she get paid for this cushy gig?

Does she really make a living writing one 900-word column a week? Taking into account her rigorous methodology, what’s that amount to… half a days work? And more importantly… how do I get this job?

Collin’s idea of exhaustive research is reading the Wall Street Journal in bed, so I viewed with suspicion her call for deeper analysis on the stem-cell debate. “It’s heady stuff, so let’s review a few facts as we wade into the politics,” she writes.

Good idea. But what kind of “facts” does she come up with?

In 2001, the Bush administration limited the federal funding of stem-cell research to some 78 pre-existing stem-cell “lines” from these sources. Of those “lines,” some smaller fraction of them has been useful.

Well, you can’t get much more specific than “some smaller fraction of” can you? Unless you spent 30 seconds searching Google, and found that according to the American Medical Association, the number of useful stem-cell lines was closer to twelve.

Sure… I know I’m quibbling here. But it’s kind of ridiculous for Collin to write that it is “better to err on the side of research and discovery,” and then not do any in preparing her column.

It is always a little easier to solicit contributions when you can show that others have already given. Thus it was good strategy for Tim Eyman to send a fundraising email on July 23, encouraging donations to his personal compensation PAC by citing a particularly generous supporter:

Yesterday, one of our supporters donated $20,000 to our compensation fund “Help Us Help Taxpayers.” Jack, Mike, and I are extremely grateful for this tremendous generosity. We know that not everyone can donate that much, but we hope that all of you will participate as much as you can.

Problem is, Eyman filed his monthly financial disclosure report with the Public Disclosure Commission yesterday, and there was no $20,000 donation listed. Indeed, for the month of July, “Help Taxpayers Help Tim” only raised a total of $7,325.

Far be it from me to question Tim’s honesty. Tim bluntly told his core group of supporters that on July 22 he received a $20,000 donation… so I’m going to have to assume that he actually received the money.

So where is it?

If he deposited it into the PAC bank account, it should have shown up on his PDC report. If it was merely a pledge, that too is required by law to be reported.

Or perhaps Tim skirted the public disclosure laws, and deposited a large, anonymous donation into a personal bank account?

I suppose it’s possible that there never was a $20,000 donation… that he intentionally misled contributors about the PAC’s finances in an effort to spur donations. But that wouldn’t just be a lie; an aggressive prosecutor might consider it yet another count of wire-fraud in what one could argue is a six-year pattern of racketeering and conspiracy to defraud contributors and evade the public disclosure laws.

So which is it Tim? Are you a liar or a crook? Or both?

I found an editorial in today’s Seattle Times rather curious. [Kerry and the FCC, forcing the issue]

On Aug. 5, Kerry promised to appoint to the Federal Communications Commission people who would maintain the existing restrictions. “As president,” Kerry said, “I will pursue a policy that tries to have as diverse and broad an ownership as possible. It is critical to who we are as a free people. It’s critical to our democracy.” That is exactly right. Media ownership should not be analyzed in economic terms only, as if what mattered were advertising rates. At issue is the public dialogue. For the same reason we do not allow the government to manage that dialogue, we cannot allow one private owner to do so either, unless one owner is all the market will support. If it supports only one newspaper and one TV station, those should be owned by different people.

Of course, what The Seattle Times is really saying is, we cannot allow one private owner to manage the public dialogue… unless that owner is The Seattle Times.

There is no arguing with the editorial’s main premise that media diversity is critical to our democracy. Yet this self-evident thesis is clearly contradicted by The Times’ own single-minded effort to drive the competing Seattle P-I out of business, thus turning Seattle into a one newspaper town.

The Times apparently understands this hypocrisy and proffers the caveat that the principle of media diversity can be discarded if “one owner is all the market will support.”

Well, I suppose from an economic perspective, that’s a reasonable corollary. Newspapers are businesses after all.

But who exactly decides whether Seattle can continue to support two newspapers? The P-I obviously has concluded that it can (unless you believe the Hearst Corporation is willing to lose money as a public service.)

The Times however, says “no.”

And there’s the rub. For if The Times were indeed the only newspaper in town, theirs would be the only voice we would hear on this issue.

I can understand — even sympathize with — the Blethen’s desire to eliminate the competition. It can’t be easy scratching out a profit in this competitive market. But their own editorial board said it best: “Media ownership should not be analyzed in economic terms only, as if what mattered were advertising rates. At issue is the public dialogue.”

There is no question that it is in The Times’ best interest to dissolve the Joint Operating Agreement. But they need to come clean with readers and admit that it is not in the public interest.

It’s old news to all but his most fervent supporters that at least part of Tim Eyman’s motivation is self-serving. Whatever you might think of his ideological agenda, you have to admit that he has exploited it to earn himself a pretty penny.

What is not always so clear is how his drive for personal remuneration constantly guides his political strategy. Take for example Initiative 892, his gambling industry backed effort to legalize slot machines. On the surface this was a simple money-grab… an irresistible opportunity to pocket $50,000 running the signature drive.

But it was also an attempt to cling to relevancy in the eyes of the core group of contributors who have enriched him over the years. Tim’s supposed focus for 2004, Initiative 864 (his bizarrely mean-spirited 25% property tax cut,) was clearly struggling, and two consecutive years off the ballot would have hurt his credibility with donors. Tim routinely asks supporters to reinvest their car tabs savings in his latest tax cutting scheme, and he desperately needed to show some hope of a return on investment.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Tim was touting I-892 in a fundraising email sent to supporters today:

With only eight weeks to gather the necessary signatures, qualifying I-892 for the ballot was very costly and the campaign is still paying off debts. The I-892 campaign will not have the funds for TV, radio, or newspaper advertising. Frankly, it’s a struggle right now just to afford campaign signs.

Oh no: I-892 can’t even afford yard signs… if you believe in I-892, you better send money now!

Problem is, the email wasn’t raising money for I-892… it was raising money for Help Us Help Taxpayers, Tim’s personal compensation PAC. Like all Tim’s emails from July through December, it ends with an appeal to send cash to “Tim, Jack & Mike.” Not a dime he raises through the end of the year will go to I-892 or any of his other anti-government initiatives.

In fact, while he continues to use I-892 to raise money to pay his Mukilteo mortgage, Tim isn’t actually running an I-892 campaign at all. I-892’s gambling industry backers simply don’t trust Tim to run the fall campaign; any expenditures on behalf of the initiative will be coordinated directly by the Entertainment Industry Association.

But Tim will continue to publicly promote I-892 as if it were his own, not because he passionately believes in its objectives, but because it gives him something — anything — to keep his name in the press, and contributions coming.

Tim tells supporters he needs to raise money for himself so he can continue to work on initiatives, but the truth is, it’s long been the other way around.

I just wanted to quickly point to an editorial in today’s Tacoma News Tribune, lauding Ron Sims newly released tax reform proposal. [From Sims, a bold bid to overhaul taxation in Washington state]

Like the TNT, I’m not completely convinced about all the details of the Sims proposal, but I loudly applaud him for boldly embracing a state income tax.

(By the way, notice that a Property Tax Homestead Exemption is a major component of the Sims plan, a proposal we aggressively promoted during the last legislative session, resulting in the introduction of HB 3076, and a fair amount of discussion in the press. See what a little hell-raising can do?)

I’ve said it before but… man, is Tim Eyman a whiner. In an email to supporters on Friday, the crybaby asked:

Why is the legal complaint against the King County Council for tampering with council-shrinking I-18 being kept a secret by the Seattle PI news department?

Um… could the answer be Tim, that the world doesn’t revolve around you?

Timmy’s political solipsism is understandable considering the media circus that has surrounded his every fart over the past six years, but he better get use to working a little harder for his free press. If not for the last-minute financial and PR windfall bestowed on him by Canadian and Nevadan gambling conglomerates, Tim would be teetering on the edge of irrelevance after two straight years of failing to qualify for the ballot.

Tim’s grown accustomed to throwing a hissyfit and seeing it broadcast on the evening news, but as his failures mount his coverage will inevitably decline. It may be hard for Tim to understand, but not everything he does is newsworthy.

In fact, very little of what he does is all that newsworthy… it’s how he does it that usually generates the press.

Anybody can file a lawsuit, Tim. And apparently the P-I’s editors felt that anybody did.

I don’t really feel like dissecting Seattle Time’s editorial columnist Collin Levey’s latest barf-bag of partially predigested partisan bile, except to say: “blah, blah, blah.” [“This band of brothers has a different view of Kerry“]

As usual, she uses her opinion column as a vehicle for rumor mongering. In the right-wing media sewer system that starts with the cesspool of supermarket tabloids and winds its way through the Wall Street Journal’s sewage treatment plant of an editorial page, Collin is our local discharge conduit, dumping its effluent into Puget Sound.

While I applaud The Seattle Times for seeing fit to provide op/ed space for a local columnist to regularly cover national and international issues, I’m having trouble understanding what exactly is “local” about Collin Levey? She never provides any local perspective, never explores the local impact of national issues, never draws on local history, people or events to color her commentaries.

Perhaps Collin actually lives in Seattle, but she might as well be writing from the WSJ’s Manhattan offices for all we know. She is essentially a nationally syndicated conservative columnist… without the syndication.

One of the lessons reinforced by last year’s “Horse’s Ass” campaign, was that people are willing to put at least as much effort into a good joke as a good cause. And if you can combine the two, all the better.

Well, I want to thank all of you who answered my rather sophomoric call to participate in the Weekly’s Best of Seattle 2004 ballot, and name me the Reader’s Pick for “Best Activist/Hell-Raiser.”

Best Activist/Hell-Raiser

David Goldstein lives up to this title. He’s extremely active (at least when it comes to hating antitax advocate Tim Eyman), and he definitely likes to raise hell (exemplified by Initiative 831, his attempt to officially declare Eyman “a horse’s ass”). Goldstein’s passion even led him on an Internet campaign to win this category as a statement against Eyman, and it worked. www.horsesass.org.

I am extremely honored — well, at the very least, rather amused — by your efforts on my behalf. Sure, “best of” polls like this are rather bogus (as evidenced by my selection,) but any opportunity to make last year’s winner, Tim Eyman, gag on his morning latte is well worth it. Plus, it made my mother’s day.

On a more serious note, it once again shows how a little bit of effort by a modest number of people can help shape the political debate. When I asked supporters to write and phone their legislators, we got a hearing on the Property Tax Homestead Exemption. When we emailed the Public Disclosure Commission, we got an investigation. And when we decided to use the Weekly’s best of poll to stick it to Timmy… we stuck it to Timmy.

Politicians and journalists seem to be under the mistaken impression that Eyman commands some kind of army of loyal, dedicated activists.

He doesn’t.

Sure, his email list may still be bigger than ours, but when it comes to dicks like Tim, size doesn’t matter. Indeed, a few weeks ago, when he repeatedly emailed his list, asking them to join him in Olympia for his I-864 failure photo-op, not a single supporter showed up.

His claims not withstanding, Tim Eyman does not represent the majority of Washington voters. The majority of voters do not want to dramatically cut state and local government, eliminate essential services, privatize schools, sell off parks and close libraries. The majority of voters do not want slot machines on every corner of every Main Street in the state.

Do the majority of voters want lower taxes? Sure. Hell, I want lower taxes! I’d also like to be able fly above Seattle traffic in my own personal helli-car.

Voters understand that you don’t get something for nothing, and if we all do our best to educate our fellow citizens that that’s exactly what Eyman is peddling, his initiatives won’t stand a chance.

Sometimes it’s enough to participate in a stupid little joke. But sometimes we all need to do a little bit more. So today we can sit back and enjoy this tiny, symbolic victory… and then redouble our efforts to defeat I-892 in November.

I’m still on “vacation” but I thought I’d take a moment to comment on a fundraising email Tim Eyman sent to supporters today, titled “Anti-tax crusader Tim Eyman isn’t finished.”

To prove his point he appended an article that ran in The Seattle Weekly… last November. [Eyman Gets Good Lawyers]

Yeah Tim, nothing says relevance like citing a 9-month-old press clip. Just ask Howard Dean.

There are a lot of important issues to blog on today: Kerry’s commanding speech at the Democratic convention, Tim Eyman’s hissyfit over the King County Council, the hidden agendas behind Initiative 892. But I’m on vacation, so I’ll just have some fun and take another run at Wall Street Journal Seattle Times editorial columnist Collin Levey.

A while back I gave Collin a backhanded compliment, criticizing a column for not meeting her “usual standard of ruthless clarity.” But after several weeks of meandering essays only slightly less muddled than their theses, I’m wondering if I set the bar too high.

That’s not to say that Collin can’t write. She certainly has a knack for stringing words together into an entertaining sentence; and those sentences tend to form coherent paragraphs.

But too often that’s where the coherence ends. She is so intent on leveling charge after charge against us anti-semitic, un-American lefties that I often feel like I’m reading multiple columns at once: on more than one occasion I’ve found myself stranded between paragraphs, nearly convinced that I had skipped a page.

Collin’s noncontiguous narrative is exacerbated by her minimalist segues, which often consist of little more than a carriage return and a linefeed. Indeed, many of her columns read like they were chopped up and reassembled by some deranged, Dadaist editor.

Of course Collin is not unique amongst the new breed of political commentators who cater to — and seem to be products of — our body politic’s growing epidemic of A.D.D. Whatever you might think of an equally partisan, old-timer like George Will, you have to admit that he knows how to solidly construct and defend a thesis. Collin, on the other hand, seems to prefer a shotgun literary mien that willingly sacrifices quality of analysis for quantity.

Her credibility as a chronicler of truth is further diminished by a penchant for littering her columns with piles of unsupported facts and unreferenced, single-word quotes. She scornfully dismisses her targets as liars and frauds, but does so on the basis of a lazy, connect-the-dots methodology that makes Michael Moore look like Will and Ariel Durant. (Look it up.)

For example, take yesterday’s column, in which she asks:

What or who exactly was Heinz Kerry referring to with the McCarthyite slur “un-American”?

What exactly is Collin referring to with the the un-American slur “McCarthyite”? Well, hell if I know, because Collin never bothers to provide any reference or context. By excerpting a quotation down to a single disembodied word, Collin hopes readers will infer a nefarious subtext, but for all I know Teresa Heinz Kerry may have been flouting her knowledge of condiments by accurately referring to the culinary origins of mayonnaise or Dijon mustard? Or perhaps she was reciting the “U” section of the dictionary?

Or maybe Mrs. Kerry was referring to one of the many times a Republican politician or commentator has questioned someone’s patriotism, merely for opposing the administration’s policies? The word “McCarthyism”, after all, was coined for its Republican namesake.

But like Collin, I digress… a nearly unavoidable pitfall when critiquing a column that jumps from attack to attack to attack, based on charges that have less visible means of support than Neil Bush.

Look… everybody has a right to their own opinions; I just don’t understand how Collin’s earned the privilege to express hers weekly in a major newspaper. (Well… as major a newspaper as we have in Washington state.) Compared to most people, she’s not such a terrible writer. It’s just that stylistically she’s more suited to writing blogs than editorial columns.

I’m not sure what the GOP hopes to gain by going after Teresa Heinz Kerry, but if that’s how they want to waste their time, fine with me: whatever fear might be mongered by questioning her fitness to hold the purely ceremonial title of First Lady, it is no match for America’s enduring love of ketchup.

Like her fellow travelers in the right-wing media, Collin Levey seems intent on emphasizing the Heinz in Teresa Heinz Kerry, perhaps attempting to alienate swing voters loyal to the Hunts brand (“Putting a lid on the loose lips of Teresa Heinz Kerry.”) But in this patriot’s opinion, any voter who would violate their freedom fries with Hunts’ watery, treacly, sorry excuse of a condiment is likely already in the camp of our watery, treacly, sorry excuse of a president.

Collin and her comrades can go out of their way to mention Mrs. Kerry’s Mozambique birth and Swiss education, but nothing says “American” like Heinz ketchup. And I find Collin’s attempt to scandalously connect John Kerry’s political fortunes to Teresa’s inherited Heinz fortune, nothing short of laughable in light of President Bush’s decade long service in the patronage of Enron.

I also find curious the media’s obsession with Mrs. Kerry telling a journalist to “shove it.” Collin compares it to Ronald Reagan calling a reporter a “son-of-a-bitch,” or Bush II referring to Adam Clymer of the NY Times as a “major league asshole.” (And then there’s Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently told Senator Patrick Leahy to “go fuck yourself.” On the Senate floor, no less. Ouch.)

What Collin fails to point out is that these occupants of our nation’s highest offices publicly used actual profanity, whereas Mrs. Kerry did not.

Now, I have nothing against profanity; indeed, I encourage it. Profanity is uniquely expressive, and there is nothing wrong with foul language when properly used… even in the presence of children.

For example, yesterday I attended a matinee performance of Little Shop of Horrors, with an audience at least half comprised of youngsters. Two of the biggest laugh lines for the kiddies came when the man-eating plant said “tough titties” and “no shit Sherlock.”

Can any utterance — even a profanity — be totally bad if it elicits peals of laughter from a roomful of children?

On the other hand, later that day, while battling through traffic in the streets of Manhattan, a more explicit profanity erupted from my throat. This autonomic utterance — while justified — displayed poor impulse control on my part… especially considering my 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old niece were in the back seat.

And that’s really the point. It’s never the profanity that is bad, but rather, the context. Nearly everybody swears in private. But when a dignitary such as a President or Vice President acts so undignified as to swear in public, it calls into question both their judgment and their self-control… two qualities we value greatly in the man who has his finger on the button.

The fact that Teresa “57 Varieties” Kerry stopped at “shove it” and didn’t continue to tell the journalist exactly where, shows more restraint than that displayed by the angry men who currently occupy the White House. This is an administration that lashes out not just at reporters, but at the world. It is an administration with blood on its hands… not ketchup.

I admit I don’t really know much about Senator Jim Honeyford (R-Sunnyside) other than his obstructionist role in the failed effort to fund problem gambling treatment and prevention during the past legislative session. He is just a state senator after all… so I feel a touch embarrassed piling on him so much.

But not so embarrassed that it prevents me from passing on the following little tidbit:

The Washington Conservation Voters recently came out with their 2003-2004 legislative scorecard, and Sen. Honeyford was the only one of 147 legislators to score 0%.

That’s zero. Zip. Zilch. A donut hole of a voting record on environmental legislation.

This is truly impressive, especially considering Sen. Honeyford’s preoccupation with shilling for the gambling industry. Legislation can be confusing, and one would expect that he might occasionally slip up and accidentally cast a mildly pro-environment vote.

At least Sen. Honeyford is a man of principles: gambling good, conservation bad.

Thank you Peter Callaghan of the Tacoma News Tribune for covering the State Senate hearing on problem gambling, that curiously refused to hear from the state’s leading problem gambling advocate, Jennifer McCausland. [Her gamble was to talk tough to legislators on treatment bill]

All the players were at the meeting of the Senate Commerce and Trade Committee. The directors of the state lottery, gambling and horse racing commissions were invited. So were the experts in the field of addiction treatment. The tribes had representatives at the table. So did the minicasinos, the charitable gambling folks and Emerald Downs.

The only person not invited was the woman most responsible for the meeting.

But then, who better to represent the interests of problem gamblers than the businesses that profit most from their addiction?

By some estimates, as much as 50% of gambling industry profits come from the 5% of the population classified as problem or pathological gamblers. So of course, these are the people Senator Jim Honeyford (the legislator a gambling industry trade journal dubbed “the best bet for expanding gambling in Washington“) relies on to create a plan for treating and preventing this devastating addiction.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Tim Eyman defend I-892 (Slots for Tots) by calling gambling a “voluntary” tax that people choose to pay. That is simply a load of crap.

Slot machines are scientifically designed to create compulsion, and the entire gambling business model is built on enabling problem gamblers and exploiting their weaknesses. In that respect, there is little to distinguish a casino from a corner crack dealer.

The gambling industry doesn’t want to prevent problem gambling… it’s their bread and butter. And by relying on the foxes to guard the hen house, Senator Honeyford apparently isn’t too concerned about preventing problem gambling either.

A couple months ago when I first turned HorsesAss.org into a political blog, I assumed I’d be writing a few hundred words, maybe four or five days a week. But as my regular readers have learned, brevity is not my strong suit.

Well, I’m on a kinda-sorta vacation, so it’s going to have to be for a little while.

I’ll still try to blog most days, but probably not with my accustomed depth. (Depth… verbosity… whatever you want to call it.)

But I am working on one really big blog — big in every sense of the word — which I plan to post before my return. So I hope you’ll keep checking back even if I miss a day or two every now and then.

In the past 20 years, the property tax rate in Washington, and its burden as a percentage of personal income, have been quite stable.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

In fact, I did say it myself, as quoted Sunday in an excellent editorial in the Columbian: “Eyman’s hand is out.”

Not only did I say it, but I can back it up. I have recently posted to TaxSanity.org a preliminary report “The truth about property taxes in Washington state.” The study points out that while Tim Eyman is correct that property taxes have increased from $1 billion to $6.25 billion since 1980, he is absolutely yanking voters’ chains by calling the increase “obscene.”

When you put the numbers in historic and economic context, you find that property tax rates, and total state and local tax burden have not only remained stable, but are actually below historic highs and the national average. This is because property taxes have closely tracked property values and personal income.

Despite Eyman’s lies, it is no secret that Washington is not a high tax state. Indeed, the state Office of Financial Management reports that in 2002, Washington was 31 out the 50 states in aggregate state and local taxes as a percentage of aggregate personal income.

Of course, none of us actually live in the aggregate and due to our astonishingly unfair tax structure (the most regressive in the nation) tax burden is too high on most middle- and lower-income households. The bottom 20% pay over 17.6% of income in state and local taxes while the top 1% pay only 3.3%.

Rather than across the board tax cuts, what we really need is tax reform that has all households pay their fair share. And for the majority of households, their fair share would be lower than they are paying now.